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This is a very disappointing approach I see on HN. Armchair analysis based on sparse information in the article assuming all kinds of things about the avionics,

This is a very disappointing approach I see on HN. Armchair analysis based on sparse information in the article assuming all kinds of things about the avionics, space hardware and rocket physics, condemning an entire team of software engineers that are working on this issue. Think about this - if you're one of those software engineers and you read some random person on forums criticizing your work without context or thorough understanding, how would you feel? I love HN for insight and intellectual debate, this kind of analysis does not add any insight - it is flat out dismissing and condescending. Edit: Also, this behavior against Boeing is unwarranted because it has bias of 737 MAX issues. Completely different team, completely different problem.

paulmd 7y ago
Yes. For the most part, software engineering is "easy". Find and apply appropriate data structure and algorithm, done. Managing a large legacy codebase and dealing with the soft factors is the hardest part of the job. This leads to a phenomenon where software engineers tend to come up with "one weird trick to solve the space shuttle, NASA hates him". And it's always specifically software engineers. Generally, most people are just as competent at their job as you are at yours. If the obvious solution is not being used, there is usually a very good reason why. A lot of fields have problems that are hard for reasons of physics or other things that are not trivially gone around, and the solution is not one software engineer swooping in with a great idea that totally revolutionizes avionics. (sometimes of course it is social factors, same as software engineering. The best way is too expensive, or management is making bad decisions, etc)
- bumby 7y ago
  The jump to simple solutions in hindsight bothers me. Especially with software in complex safety-critical systems it's often incredibly hard to capture all the permutations that can lead to a failure mode. I wouldn't doubt most programmers could do an failure mode effects analysis on the software and figure out they need to mitigate an event where the timer fails to sync. But how many would also capture how to mitigate that sync failure at the precise time the system lost satellite comm? Probably a heck of a lot less. Now multiply that by the total number of software failure modes (including those latent ones we just get lucky with) and see how many get captured. There's a reason why software in these types of systems is incredibly hard to test.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  This problem is software engineering, isn't it? How are you defining it?
jjuhl 7y ago
If you are actually on the team, you shouldn't be reading HN or any other random internet forum to try and get accurate feedback on your work in the first place.
- spectramax 7y ago
  That's besides the point - I was just making a remark that how would they "feel". Not saying at all about whether they should looking around on the internet for feedback.
lancewiggs 7y ago
Culture is culture. The 737 Max issues relate to the 787 battery issues relate to this. Is the company run by safety-first oriented aeronautical engineers or not.
scottlocklin 7y ago
>Think about this - if you're one of those software engineers and you read some random person on forums criticizing your work without context or thorough understanding, how would you feel? Who gives a shit how he feels? He works at a company that builds death traps, and someone at that company has built one himself. People like this should feel overpowering shame and contemplate the poor life choices that brought them to this terrible place. Boeing is a great argument for the corporate death penalty. Its stock price should go to zero, and its assets divided between its creditors and the military pieces nationalized.
travisporter 7y ago
I would wager that even if you find the one guy/girl who made this timer error, the decision to not use other sensors, other failsafes was probably made by a higher-up or a team.
- bumby 7y ago
  It's usually driven by system safety analysis criteria. E.g., if a timer failure is categorized as "catastrophic" it may be required to have X amount of redundancy. The amount of redundancy defined by 'X' may be driven by customer (i.e. NASA) requirements.
spookthesunset 7y ago
Agree. HN is getting full of people with some serious chips on their shoulder. Any article with the words "Amazon", "Boeing", "Google", or "Facebook" in it will be flooded with, to be blunt, a bunch of garbage posts. Not a good insightful, intellectual discussion. Just people with massive chips on their shoulders flooding the comments with noise.
magduf 7y ago
>this behavior against Boeing is unwarranted because it has bias of 737 MAX issues. Completely different team, completely different problem. Wrong. Do you somehow thing there's a different management team running these parts of the company? There's only one CEO at Boeing, it's only one company. And culture starts at the top. Questioning Boeing's competence here is entirely warranted when the company has already PROVEN that it is happy to put profits ahead of safety.
throwaway_se099 7y ago
> Armchair analysis based on sparse information That's internet in a nutshell, and HN is not that different despite pretensions to the contrary. What partly redeems it is the better than even chance that in posts with technical subjects, someone informed and/or competent will appear and write something worthy. You learn to filter out the rest.
perl4ever 7y ago
"Completely different team, completely different problem" It...seems sort of similar to me, based on the article I read. It's not similar at all in the consequences, because of the context of the flight. But in the way things went wrong. A question that I have unanswered is, Boeing was reported as saying that if there were astronauts they would be "safe"...but would it be possible to retrieve them?
- spectramax 7y ago
  The problem is that there is ample press and experts who have scrutinized the 737-MAX issues for over 8 months now - there were multiple systematic/organizational issues and oversights all over the place - that should be duly criticized and it was, but let's learn about this other issue in a completely different division (Space), take hints and jump to conclusions about their incompetence. This is immature, condescending and disrespectful of the engineers that worked on making this happen. SHIT happens in space flight all the time. The rate at which shit happens in space is on a few orders of magnitude different than shit that happens in commercial aerospace. Ask how many times SpaceX failed to do what they do today and it will fail more times in future, no doubt. I also understand the company culture point - yea, company culture probably isnt the best at Boeing but they've done many many things right in past decades. They're a huge company with a lot of talented engineers (and a lot of bozos). Their CEO is a complete asshat and I am sure people inside Boeing talk about it. I just think that there is unnecessary scrunity without data to say definitively what happened.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I don't jump to conclusions about "incompetent engineers" in either case, so it doesn't affect my opinion of the similarity.

paulmd 7y ago

Yes. For the most part, software engineering is "easy". Find and apply appropriate data structure and algorithm, done. Managing a large legacy codebase and dealing with the soft factors is the hardest part of the job. This leads to a phenomenon where software engineers tend to come up with "one weird trick to solve the space shuttle, NASA hates him". And it's always specifically software engineers. Generally, most people are just as competent at their job as you are at yours. If the obvious solution is not being used, there is usually a very good reason why. A lot of fields have problems that are hard for reasons of physics or other things that are not trivially gone around, and the solution is not one software engineer swooping in with a great idea that totally revolutionizes avionics. (sometimes of course it is social factors, same as software engineering. The best way is too expensive, or management is making bad decisions, etc)

bumby 7y ago
The jump to simple solutions in hindsight bothers me. Especially with software in complex safety-critical systems it's often incredibly hard to capture all the permutations that can lead to a failure mode. I wouldn't doubt most programmers could do an failure mode effects analysis on the software and figure out they need to mitigate an event where the timer fails to sync. But how many would also capture how to mitigate that sync failure at the precise time the system lost satellite comm? Probably a heck of a lot less. Now multiply that by the total number of software failure modes (including those latent ones we just get lucky with) and see how many get captured. There's a reason why software in these types of systems is incredibly hard to test.
perl4ever 7y ago
This problem is software engineering, isn't it? How are you defining it?

jjuhl 7y ago

If you are actually on the team, you shouldn't be reading HN or any other random internet forum to try and get accurate feedback on your work in the first place.

spectramax 7y ago
That's besides the point - I was just making a remark that how would they "feel". Not saying at all about whether they should looking around on the internet for feedback.

lancewiggs 7y ago

Culture is culture. The 737 Max issues relate to the 787 battery issues relate to this. Is the company run by safety-first oriented aeronautical engineers or not.

scottlocklin 7y ago

>Think about this - if you're one of those software engineers and you read some random person on forums criticizing your work without context or thorough understanding, how would you feel? Who gives a shit how he feels? He works at a company that builds death traps, and someone at that company has built one himself. People like this should feel overpowering shame and contemplate the poor life choices that brought them to this terrible place. Boeing is a great argument for the corporate death penalty. Its stock price should go to zero, and its assets divided between its creditors and the military pieces nationalized.

travisporter 7y ago

I would wager that even if you find the one guy/girl who made this timer error, the decision to not use other sensors, other failsafes was probably made by a higher-up or a team.

bumby 7y ago
It's usually driven by system safety analysis criteria. E.g., if a timer failure is categorized as "catastrophic" it may be required to have X amount of redundancy. The amount of redundancy defined by 'X' may be driven by customer (i.e. NASA) requirements.

spookthesunset 7y ago

Agree. HN is getting full of people with some serious chips on their shoulder. Any article with the words "Amazon", "Boeing", "Google", or "Facebook" in it will be flooded with, to be blunt, a bunch of garbage posts. Not a good insightful, intellectual discussion. Just people with massive chips on their shoulders flooding the comments with noise.

magduf 7y ago

>this behavior against Boeing is unwarranted because it has bias of 737 MAX issues. Completely different team, completely different problem. Wrong. Do you somehow thing there's a different management team running these parts of the company? There's only one CEO at Boeing, it's only one company. And culture starts at the top. Questioning Boeing's competence here is entirely warranted when the company has already PROVEN that it is happy to put profits ahead of safety.

throwaway_se099 7y ago

> Armchair analysis based on sparse information That's internet in a nutshell, and HN is not that different despite pretensions to the contrary. What partly redeems it is the better than even chance that in posts with technical subjects, someone informed and/or competent will appear and write something worthy. You learn to filter out the rest.

perl4ever 7y ago

"Completely different team, completely different problem" It...seems sort of similar to me, based on the article I read. It's not similar at all in the consequences, because of the context of the flight. But in the way things went wrong. A question that I have unanswered is, Boeing was reported as saying that if there were astronauts they would be "safe"...but would it be possible to retrieve them?

spectramax 7y ago
The problem is that there is ample press and experts who have scrutinized the 737-MAX issues for over 8 months now - there were multiple systematic/organizational issues and oversights all over the place - that should be duly criticized and it was, but let's learn about this other issue in a completely different division (Space), take hints and jump to conclusions about their incompetence. This is immature, condescending and disrespectful of the engineers that worked on making this happen. SHIT happens in space flight all the time. The rate at which shit happens in space is on a few orders of magnitude different than shit that happens in commercial aerospace. Ask how many times SpaceX failed to do what they do today and it will fail more times in future, no doubt. I also understand the company culture point - yea, company culture probably isnt the best at Boeing but they've done many many things right in past decades. They're a huge company with a lot of talented engineers (and a lot of bozos). Their CEO is a complete asshat and I am sure people inside Boeing talk about it. I just think that there is unnecessary scrunity without data to say definitively what happened.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I don't jump to conclusions about "incompetent engineers" in either case, so it doesn't affect my opinion of the similarity.